In this tutorial I will show you how to use an HDRI and the environment texture node to quickly and easily light your scene.

Environment Texture Node

I am using a model I downloaded from Sketchfab

I have no lights in my scene – so everything is black when I’m in render mode

I will split the viewport and open the shader editor

I change my data type to world

I add an environment texture node and open the HDRI that I downloaded

The HDRI I’m using is from AmbientCG

I then connect the node to the background node

Lighting Options

The environment texture node gives me multiple options

The texture interpolation allows me to change the interpolation of the image which can increase or decrease the readability of the image during resizing

The projection method determines how the 2D image is being projected onto the 3D object

Image source is simply where the image comes from

The color space refers to the color space of the image

The alpha is the alpha within the space of the image

The vector input allows me to use other nodes to control the HDRI

I can use the strength of the background node to change the strength of the HDRI

I have the node wrangler installed so if I select the environment texture node and use CTRL + T I add a texture coordinate node and mapping node

I can now use these nodes to fine-tune the HDRI

For example, I can change the Z Rotation to change how the HDRI affects the lighting of my scene

I can also use the location fields to change the location of the HDRI relative to the object

If I render this object, I can see the HDRI in the background

If I want the lighting information but I don’t want to see the HDRI itself, under the render tab, under the film panel, I can activate “transparent”

This allows me to see the lighting information but not the HDRI